Welcome to the Kafkaesque world of Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), a white-collar drone stuck in a waking nightmare of perpetual humiliation. His boss berates him; technology seems to have a personal grudge against him; and Simon’s dream girl—a clerk in the copy department named Hannah (Mia Wasikowska)—only barely acknowledges his existence. Enter James Simon (also Eisenberg): a doppelgänger who’s the aggressive, Type-A alpha to Simon’s withering beta. James charms the pants off of everybody in the office and, for a price, promises to help Simon woo Hannah. Everything is too good to be true, of course, as James’ real agenda starts to become apparent. Appearances are never what they seem, even if they’re identical. Combining the steampunk dystopia of Brazil, strains of skewed social satire, Dostoevskian existential paranoia and homages to cheesy ’80s sci-fi, writer/director/actor Richard Ayoade’s sophomore film wears its impeccable influences on its stylistically tattered sleeve. The curdled-absurdist sensibility that this tale of two Simons displays, however, is completely the work of its author. Fans of British comedy and cinema will delight in counting off the cameos (keep an eye out for James Fox, Chris Dowd, Paddy Considine, Sally Hawkins and Brass Eye’s Chris Morris) but one doesn’t need to be a bibliophile or an Anglophile to get the dread. One only needs to believe that for every ying, there’s also a yang—and that yang may want the whole circle of life all for itself. —David Fear

After studying law at Cambridge (and being president of the university’s prestigious Footlight theatrical club), Richard Ayoade wrote, directed and co-starred in the sci-fi parody TV series Gareth Merengih’s Darkplace, based off a character he invented for the stage. A winner of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s Perrier Comedy Award, he made a name for himself as a performer in the BAFTA-winning Britcom The IT Crowd. He has directed music videos for Vampire Weekend, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Arctic Monkeys, among others. He made his feature debut with the coming-of-age dramedy Submarine (SFIFF 2011).